You are here

Barry W. is a single guy living in Holbrook, Long Island and working as an ambulette driver. He is the perfect example of how credit card debt can creep up on you and become unmanageable before you know it. Most people cannot understand how one day you can handle your bills and then it only takes a minor misstep for the debt and interest to pile up.

Elizabeth N. lives in Hicksville, Long Island and made a career out of helping people as a home health aide and a baby sitter. If working two jobs wasn't enough the divorced mother of three raised her beautiful children in Nassau County. Elizabeth sacrificed a lot for her kids and worked hard but after some bad luck she found herself $64,000 in credit card debt and at the mercy of aggressive creditor calls.

She harbored the familiar natural fears about the idea of filing for bankruptcy, public embarrasment and loss of credit. But when Chapter 7 wiped away her debt and ended collection actions by the likes of Cohen & Slamowitz, Hann Financial Services and LVNV Funding, Elizabeth exclaimed, "Filing bankruptcy was the best decision I ever made."

Rosalyn T. and her husband lived on the upper east side for over 30 years. They called home a beautiful apartment in one of the world's most expensive zip codes, 10028 which was subject to New York City rent controlled laws! When she consulted with Doyaga & Schaefer about filing for bankruptcy she only wanted to know one thing, could her landlord use bankruptcy to kick her out of her apartment. Thankfully, the answer was no.

David B is a 61 year old materials/manager engineer who lives in Nassau County. After going through a divorce and loss of a job, he found himself with nearly $250,000 in credit card debt.

How did he build up so much debt? It all started in 2003 when he and his wife split and finally divorced. Immediately after he was divorced he suffered a few, slow years of self employment. As his income decreased he began to live off credit.

One day he was regretfully notified that one of his Chase bank accounts was frozen by Melan & Associates. As a judgment creditor they had a legal right to put a hold on his personal bank account. After working hard for 30 years he felt “powerless.”

One of the partners at Doyaga & Schaefer, David Doyaga, teaches a Continuing Legal Education (CLE) course every year at the Brooklyn Bar Association. The topics lectured on range from bankruptcy basics to recent developments in bankruptcy law. This year some hot topics included some interesting developments about some possible imminent changes to discharging student loans in bankruptcy.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported that the total outstanding student loan debt in the United States on 2012 totaled $902 billion. Student loan debt is extremely common and can become incredibly burdensome. Typically student loans cannot be discharged and Debtors that try to often fail to meet the legal test (called the Brunner test) for undue hardship. Historically, this test has been nearly impossible to meet. There has been some movement among the circuit courts away from strict adherence to the Brunner test, namely in the 7th Circuit and the 9th Circuit but there is still a long way to go before a Debtor can discharge student loan debt in full and without meeting the high burden of the Brunner test.